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Title:
The House on the Borderlands
Series:
-----
Author: William Hope Hodgson
Rating:
3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Horror
Pages:
157
Words: 52K
Publish: 1908
(This
book was recommended by Snapdragon
Alcove and the link goes to her review from 2023)
I am putting the “horror” tag on this even though it could just as easily go into the fantasy camp. Mainly because the story does start out very horrifyingly. An old man is living with his aged sister at a big old empty house and he starts seeing these horrible pigmen around the place. They are trying to get into the house, he has to board the place up, lock his sister into her room so she doesn’t accidentally open a door and keep the pigmen at bay with his small arsenal of guns. That part was genuinely scary. Then throw in the fact that the author gives hints that maybe this is all happening in the head of the main character and the “creep” factor rockets off the charts for me.
Sadly, then we get a section of out of body experience that was extremely similar to the Time Traveller in Wells’ The Time Machine, where he just watches the earth age and looks at things on a cosmic scale. It was genuinely boring.
Then Hodgson tries to throw in some sort of romance thing. It was the worst part of the book because it was so hamhandedly handled. She doesn’t even get a name, just “My former love”. Oh my goodness, it was like reading something a twenty year old would have written. It made me cringe. Then he went back to the cosmic journey thing and I was bored again.
Thankfully, the old guy comes back to earth with no time having passed (hence another hint that it all might be in his head) and the pigmen assault the place again. Creepy.
So this read was a complete mixed bag. I enjoyed it enough to give it 3stars and decide to seek out a Complete Works of Hodgson’s stuff. Public Domain is a wonderful thing. But I am tempering my expectations because of his cosmic passage parts of the story. I fully expect to be bored out of my skull by some of his dumbassery in future books.
I
must also admit that this got a bit of a ratings bump just because of
the cover. I mean, how awesomely scary looking is that? Wicked, man…
★★★☆☆
From Wikipedia
Two men on a two-week fishing holiday in remote western Ireland are surprised to discover a strange abyss. On a rock spur above this pit they find ruins and buried in them a journal, which they read.
The author of the journal introduces himself as an old man who has lived for years in an ancient house accompanied only by his sister, who serves as housekeeper, and his dog, Pepper. He has no contact with the local inhabitants, who say he is mad. The house is circular in form and its weird appearance includes peculiar decorations that suggest leaping flames. It has had an evil reputation for centuries and had been empty for many years when he purchased it. The diary will record his strange experiences and thoughts.
Late one night, as he was reading in his study, the light suddenly turned green and then red. Pepper hid under his chair and he sat still, frightened. The red light went low, and he was no longer afraid. The far side of the room became a vision of a vast empty plain. He floated like a bubble into space, leaving the earth and sun behind as he travelled into utter darkness and despair. He reached the world of the vast plain, whose sun is a wreath of red flame. He was brought to an arena: an immense green jade copy of his own house, at the centre of a circle miles across, circled by mountains containing hundreds of huge idols of Beast-gods and Horrors. As he nears the huge building, a humanoid creature with the repellent head and face of a huge swine is trying to get into the House. The Swine-creature suddenly and horribly moves toward him, but he is borne upward, then reverses his travel through space to return to his study.
Several months later, horrible man-sized creatures with dead-white skin emerge from a nearby Pit and assault the House. The Swine-Things are strong and intelligent but are unable to break in; after a night and day in which the Recluse kills some of them they disappear. He is terrified by the violent creatures and he waits several days before leaving the House with Pepper to search the former gardens outside.
A week later, he and Pepper explore the Pit that appears to be the source of the Swine-Things. A tunnel leads to an immensely deep abyss. Water flows down the tunnel and the struggle of wading against it to get back out is exhausting. Two weeks afterwards the Pit has become a lake. He revisits a trap door in the Cellar, realizing that it opens to the bottomless abyss.
Asleep in his study, the Recluse awakens into a place like a mist of light and meets his lost love. She calls the place the Sea of Sleep, and implores him to leave the evil House, but admits that they would never have met again had he been anywhere else.
The journal starts again, with the passage of time increasing in speed. Days and nights pass more and more quickly, the sun and moon become flickers and years blur. Pepper's body, then his own, crumble into dust. The House falls, the world fades, time slowly grinds to a halt and the solar system ends with his perception of an immense green star, celestial globes, and another timeless meeting in the Sea of Sleep with the lost love. He is brought again to the Arena and into the great House. He is again in his own study, with time running normally.
The malicious Swine-creature from the Arena inflicts a luminous fungal growth on a dog and the Recluse is barely able to stop himself from letting it into the House. He has also contracted the disease, and the manuscript ends with the man in his study as the creature comes through the trap door in the Cellar.
The two men recover from reading the journal and return to fishing, making no attempt to revisit the horrible pit. Their driver interviews an old man in the local village who remembers the evil house that everyone avoided had once been occupied by an unsociable old man and his elderly sister. Once a month, a man who told the villagers nothing took supplies to the house; years went by until suddenly that man excitedly reported that the house had disappeared and there was now a chasm where it had been.
